The festive note was penned by John, in 1968 for his wife Yoko Ono’s ex, music producer Tony Cox, and the former couple’s daughter, Kyoko Cox. The card, which is being sold on MomentsInTime.com, is believed to be referring to Yoko – who was married to Tony from 1962 to 1969 – moving out. It reads: “Dear Tony, we took most of the stuff I think … if we picked up anything of yours – or something you need (don’t panic!)

“We’ll put it back or send it depending where you are. Hope it’s o.k. there – it sounds it.

“Merry Xmas etc

“John and Yoko (sic)”

Another page of the note sees John asking Tony where the mastertapes of a 1968 concert Yoko performed are, and two of her short films. He writes: “We can’t find them.”

In the part addressed to Kyoko, the card reads: “To Dear Kyoko, A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, lots of love and kisses, John and mommy.”

In February 2016, a four-inch lock of John’s hair sold for $35,000 at auction. The ‘Imagine’ hitmaker’s tresses were chopped off prior to his 1967 movie role in ‘How I Won the War’. What’s more, his Rolls Royce Phantom V once sold for $2.23 million and lyrics to Beatles hit ‘All You Need is Love’ fetched $1.25 million.

A set of unseen images of John Lennon, which were in a “junk drawer” for over 30 years because they were thought to have no value, have been unveiled.

The 26 negatives, dating from 1970, were brought to a valuation day at Liverpool’s The Beatles Story museum.

Their owner said his late father may have come by them while studying art in the 1970s.

The “intimate portraits” were “a rare find” and could be worth £10,000, auctioneer Darren Julien said.

He added that it was “not often when you find images of John Lennon that have never before been seen by the public”.

The museum’s marketing manager Diane Glover said their owner, who wanted to remain anonymous, had found them among his late father’s possessions.

He told museum staff they had been put in the drawer for at least 34 years, because they were thought to have no value.

The negatives, which date from February 1970, capture Lennon at a pivotal point in his career – The Beatles were breaking up and he had recently released his third single, Instant Karma.

It became the first solo single by a member of the iconic rock band to sell more than a million copies in America.

Ms Glover said the negatives and images taken from them would be on display at the attraction from November, before being auctioned in 2018.

She added that the valuation day had also uncovered a signed Beatles Christmas Show programme from a concert in Bradford in 1963, which was valued at £8,000, and a signed John Lennon postcard, which was estimated to be worth £5,000.

John Lennon’s personal copy of Yesterday And Today by the Beatles, featuring the controversial ‘Butcher Cover’ will go to auction next month.

The 1966 record was initially only launched in the US and Canada and arrived in Japan in the 70s – but it took until 2014 for the album to be released in the UK on CD.

John’s prototype version will be one of the items for sale at Heritage Auctions on November 11, with the album given to Beatles fan and collector Dave Morrell, who was in a studio showing Lennon some of his memorabilia and bootleg material in 1971. John traded the album for a reel-to-reel tape of the Beatles tribute supergroup Yellow Matter Custard and filled the blank back cover with an original piece of art in black ink. It depicts a man with a shovel and his dog, both posed in front of a setting sun. The album also features Lennon’s signature along with those of Paul and Ringo.

Bids are currently being accepted for the unique piece of Beatles’ memorabilia and it’s expected to sell for more than $200,000.

In 1967, rock ’n’ roll was flourishing, the hippie movement was happening and pop sensations (such as the Beatles) had gone from being perceived as teen heartthrobs to experimental artists. But the old guard that controlled and wrote for newspapers and magazines still appeared to regard rock music as an inconvenient fad.

Trade papers, like Billboard, covered younger band’s sales and popularity, but rarely dug deeper into the significance of the music. Self-published fanzines were lovingly devoted to their favorite musicians, but rarely lasted more than a handful of issues. Aspiring journalist Jann Wenner saw an opportunity.

The New York native had moved west to attend the University of California, Berkeley, where he wrote for the student newspaper. While writing for The Daily Californian in 1965, he struck up a friendship with Ralph J. Gleason, the San Francisco Chronicle’s jazz writer who was nearly 30 years his senior. Unlike many other jazz aficionados, Gleason appreciated rock, Bob Dylan and soul singers. He soon became Wenner’s mentor.

“He loved Lenny Bruce and politics. He had an open mind and an open ear,” Wenner recalled. “He revered the rock poets, but he always had perspective, which was the name of his column: ‘Perspectives.’ I’d be like, ‘Jerry Garcia is the greatest guitarist in the world!’ He’d say, ‘But, Jann, have you heard of Wes Montgomery?’”

A couple of years after their first meeting, during which time Wenner had dropped out of college, the 21-year-old rock fan told Gleason about his big idea: a rock ’n’ roll magazine that would explore all aspects of the music, but also hold itself to high journalistic standards. Gleason was intrigued and they started to think about magazine names – the Electric Typewriter, the New Times and, eventually, Rolling Stone. Although Wenner would later write in the first issue that the name was a reference to the Muddy Waters tune and the famous rock band and the Dylan song, the latter was the real inspiration.The pair had an idea, a name and two writers (themselves), but no money or staff to begin. Wenner borrowed money from family, as well as his future wife’s parents, and enlisted the help of volunteers. Those who wouldn’t work for free, such as photographer Baron Wolman, received stock and retained the rights to their contributions.

In the fall of 1967, Rolling Stone began operating out of a loft at 746 Brannan Street in San Francisco, a space Wenner had secured by promising to use the owner’s downstairs printing press. A staff that included Wenner’s girlfriend Jane Schindelheim, her roommate Angie Kucherenko, art director John Williams and professional journalist Michael Lydon was small, but dedicated. Many early articles would be credited to RS Editors or not carry a byline at all. “We didn’t put our names on everything,” Lydon said, “because that would have showed how few people were working for the paper.”

However, Lydon did have his name on the first issue’s big page-one story, a piece investigating some missing profits from that year’s Monterey International Pop Music Festival. The cover, which looked more like a newspaper in the early going, also featured pieces about local band Jefferson Airplane and local pop/rock radio station KFRC. It was a very California-centric first issue.

That is, with the exception of the element that everyone remembers about the first Rolling Stone cover. Just a couple days before printing, Wenner selected a photo of John Lennon, a promotional shot from the Richard Lester film How I Won the War, which was hitting U.S. theaters at the same time the magazine was introducing itself. “It was the last piece of the puzzle for the issue,” Wenner said at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Exhibit highlighting 50 years of Rolling Stone. “It was a defining cover, because it encompassed music, movies and politics .

Jonas Mekas: ‘At the time I saw a lot of John and Yoko, and I always enjoyed our time together.’ Photograph: Jonas Mekas/Gretchen Berg/Courtesy Anthology Editions Copyright Jonas Mekas

I began taking pictures in a serious way just after the second world war. I had been in a labour camp and, when the war ended, a displaced person’s camp in Germany; so my earliest images depicted the life of refugees.

I came to the US on 30 October 1949, aged 27. I knew someone in Chicago and he guaranteed me a job so I could get my green card. But when I landed in New York I decided it would be foolish to go anywhere else: it was electrifying, exciting. Everything was changing in the arts world – it was about to explode, with Marlon Brando, Ginsberg, the beat generation.

I didn’t care for the city itself; I barely noticed it. It was the intensity of life that caught me: I immersed myself in poetry, theatre, ballet and cinema. A few weeks after I arrived, I bought a 16mm film camera and started to make movies. The war had taken my growing-up period away from me, so I decided to catch up.

By 1960, I was editing Film Culture magazine, and that’s when I first met Yoko Ono. She was studying in New York and making her earliest work. In order to settle here, she needed a green card, so she came to me for a job. I was her sponsor.

A few years later, she went to London and met John Lennon. They returned together, and on his first night in New York, we all met for coffee. In December 1970 they came to the Invisible Cinema, a specially designed theatre I had just opened on Lafayette Street. I organised a little film festival and Yoko made two films for me in 10 days: one called Legs, and one called Fly. Legs consisted of a camera panning around different legs, mostly belonging to John and Yoko’s friends; Fly followed a fly in close up as it walked over the body of a nude female.

The cinema was designed for 70 people; when you were in your winged seat, you saw only the screen – not your neighbour or the person in front of you. The walls and seats were black velvet so that during the projection everything was dark but the film. In this photograph, we’re waiting for a movie to start.

At the time I saw a lot of John and Yoko, and I always enjoyed our time together. He was open, relaxed, very spontaneous. It felt like anything could happen, at any moment. Yoko was more controlled, but she was very warm and we remain good friends. She loved New York as much as I did. She once wrote to me from Japan, where she was working: “I’m coming to the end of my wits,” she wrote. “New York is my only town. Kiss the pavements… for me.”

It was through her that I came to dance with Fred Astaire, for her 1972 film, Imagine: he danced across a room, and I followed him, with no rehearsal. It was brief, but memorable.

I think Yoko is misunderstood. Those who blame her for the breakup of the Beatles – that’s not the woman I know. She and John were very sweet, very much in love. I’m lucky to have met them; I was lucky, too, that I had to leave my country, and arrive in New York when I did.

Yoko Ono will share the story of the making of John Lennon’s album “Imagine” in a “landmark publication” with Thames & Hudson.

The book is due for release in October 2018 and will contain “unseen photographs, artefacts and new interviews” with the people who were there when the album was conceived and recorded.

This year Ono belatedly received an official co-credit on the album’s title track, in accordance with Lennon’s wishes.

Ono said: “A lot has been written about the creation of the song, the album and the film of ‘Imagine’, mainly by people who weren’t there, so I’m very pleased and grateful that now, for the first time, so many of the participants have kindly given their time to ‘gimme some truth’ in their own words and pictures.”

Tristan de Lancey, head of illustrated reference at Thames & Hudson, signed the title directly from Ono.